The Internet is the perfect place to market wines that imitate those of the big wineries and that usually end up in the hands of consumers with little experience and a lot of money to spend.
“Perhaps now we are more aware of them but, in reality, they have been given throughout life,” he says. Marla Gonzalez, sommelier and 2022 Spanish team tasting champion, referring to fake wines. In recent times it is increasingly common to see news in the media in which the police intervene tens, hundreds and sometimes thousands of fake bottles.
It is estimated that no less than 20% of came that circulates worldwide is counterfeit or, to put it more mildly, lies about its true origin. Within these fakesThere are two big categories.
As Marla (pictured above) tells us, the first type is made up of high-end wine fakes, which she calls “unicorns.” Very limited edition bottles that supposedly come from prestigious Burgundy wineries, Bordeaux, Tuscany or even of USA; areas that, for almost everyone, are synonymous with luxury, exclusivity and the highest quality. At the Spanish level, Vega Sicily Y pingus are usually the most affected.
But there is also a second type of fraud based more on quantity than on quality and that affect mid-range wines. In our country we have plenty of this type of cases, which are the ones with the oldest tradition. There are many examples, such as the one detected last year that affected some wineries in Catalonia, but it also occurs in The Rioja Y in other Denominations of Origin.
It works like this: “Some unscrupulous growers buy grapes from places like the stainwhere the production is much higher than in its areas of origin”, explains the expert, “and they pass it off as their own grape, producing wine with it, lying in some cases about the varieties used and putting their label on it”. of liters produced in a harvest can thus be multiplied by two, three or more.These frauds can move millions of bottles that end up in the large distribution chains and that consumers buy without ever knowing that they have been given a pig in a poke .
Marla points to two main causes for the rise of wine fraud. “On the one hand, the consumption of quality wine does not stop growing and, with greater demand, there is more outlet for counterfeits. For another, the number of consumers of quality wine has skyrocketed. There are more people who, although they do not have knowledge of oenology, have money and want to enter this world. They look for brands and it’s quite easy to fool them.”
But, without a doubt, another of the key factors in the rise of fake wines is the increase in online sales of quality wines. “In the network it is easier for them to sneak a bottle like that because you don’t have it in front of you,” says the expert. “There are wine auction pages where it is easy to sell fraudulent bottles. This does not mean that all of them are, of course. In addition, there are more and more controls: some websites have experts who are dedicated to reviewing the wines and confirming that everything It’s fine. But without a doubt, the internet is the easiest place to find fake bottles at exorbitant prices.”
But, Is there any way to realize that we are facing a fraud? According to sommelier Felipe Urbano, “it is practically impossible for ordinary consumers to detect it. We experts have a better chance of noticing it, but we are not infallible either. If we are not familiar with a particular wine, such as when we do blind or some contest, finding out the origin of a bottle is not an easy task”.
“On the other hand,” he adds, “the consumer’s trust in the store or restaurant that is selling the wine also makes it difficult to detect. Nobody thinks that if they order a bottle of Pétrus from a Michelin-starred restaurant, which is usually sold for between 3,000 and 6,000 euros, they are going to cheat you. That makes the work of counterfeiters easier”.
“There are some very good fakes out there fooling the world’s most experienced sommeliers and winemakers,” confirms Marla. “Imagine someone who has no knowledge of wine. In fact, to detect these copies you have to go much further than the liquid itself: it is necessary to examine the type of bottle, its weight, its color, the density of the glass, the label, the cork, the capsule and even review the vintages, because sometimes bottles are produced from years in which there was no wine harvest authentic”.
“Also there are some wineries that they are allocating part of their resources to prevent counterfeits“, he continues. “In the case of Vega Sicilia, for example, the bottles are all numbered with a digital code that allows to verify its authenticity through a web page. But I also know that there are others that, either because they are very classic, very old-school or very from the village, they don’t do any of this because they don’t consider it to be part of their philosophy”.
“I’ve always thought”, adds Felipe before finishing, “that behind these counterfeit wine networks there is something more. Something that we will hardly ever know”. And he wonders: “Isn’t it strange that in a Michelin star restaurant ten or twelve bottles of a supposedly exceptional, world-renowned wine are sold, and that nobody suspects anything? Aren’t you surprised when you buy six cases of that star wine that is worth 3,000 euros at 200? I don’t like to think about those things, to be honest, because I always see the romantic part, the beautiful part of wine, but it’s still a business. When a wine is put up for sale in a supermarket that turns out to be fake. Does the buyer not notice? Wasn’t the commercial a different person? Isn’t he buying it at a suspiciously low price?”